Q&A with MaryJo Cooper, Vice President of Developmental Services

Q: What were the biggest challenges of the last year within your division?

MaryJo: I mean, obviously, keeping people healthy and safe was the paramount concern, and the biggest challenge. But, I also think that in the midst of everything, it can’t be understated how hard it was to appropriately convey how grateful we were for all the amazing work people were doing. Do people understand how much we value the work they’re doing?

It was a topsy-turvy time. Nobody’s job was the same—people weren’t doing what they thought they’d be doing, they were doing the jobs that needed to be done. Programs were completely restructured on the fly and changing all the time—how do we keep people apprised of the changes? We needed to be able to emphasize the right priorities and put aside the stuff that just couldn’t matter in the moment.

Q: How was Developmental Services able to successfully adapt to the challenges?

MaryJo: The Day Services and Family Support moved virtual—offering Zoom support groups and a slew of new planned activities that could be done with minimal guidance in clients’ own homes. Our IT department was also fantastic in both finding us the appropriate technology that our folks with intellectual disabilities could use, providing them with the access to it, and teaching people how to use it.

We stayed in very close communication with our stakeholders and partner organizations, and worked with those outside partners to make sure people were covered.

And our staff were just phenomenally creative and flexible about changing shifts and job responsibilities. Our Family Support team would deliver food and supplies to the homes of families we work with. Our frontline workers were amazingly resourceful, and our nurses stepped up into a position of leadership, providing training for the entire agency. We added more than 100 new protocols for care, which is a tremendous amount. And our department ran the Distribution Center out of our Bradston Street program, making sure the agency was equipped with PPE.

Q: What notable programmatic achievements have come about during the last year?

MaryJo: Somehow, in the midst of everything going on, we were actually able to open some new programs. One is a four-bed residential program for younger autistic men. We also opened our Parkside ABI (Acquired Brain Injury) program, which is a highly specialized, super intensive residential program in Charlestown.

We just recently created a Haitian Family Support Program. The program director has been going out the meet the families, doing a lot of outreach and sharing with them the full range of services we’re able to provide to families who have a member with a disability. 

And in October, we opened a stabilization program for people with significant health problems, as well as major psychiatric and developmental issues, called Meraki House. Meraki is meant to be a short term program that focuses on individual needs, goals and vision, and at its core promotes self-esteem, self-monitoring and self-regulation. It’s different from anything else we, or anyone in the region really, are doing. It’s very exciting. 

Q: One thing that distinguishes Developmental Services from Bay Cove’s other service areas is that your service area frequently works with individuals for a prolonged period of time—often through different stages of their lives. How does that inform the way you and your team approach your work?

MaryJo: For me, it’s a real privilege to be able to say that we partner with people for life. I have people in our service area who were with Bay Cove as children receiving Early Intervention services, and are now receiving very different supports as adults. 

Bay Cove has always been about meeting people where they’re at, and providing the services they need at that time. But what’s so cool about what we do is that we have the ability to change our services to meet their needs as they change over time. For example, our residential programs are not about transitional homes—we provides permanent places for people to call home. But, if we have a home where the residents are aging, we will train our staff accordingly, bring in new technology, and retrofit and renovate our homes to make sure they are still effective and comfortable and fitting people’s needs. 

What we do in all of our programs is work to maximize independence, maximize community contribution, and integrate people into their community. They may always need some level of support, but one of the privileges in working with people this way is that we get to know people really well for a long time, which makes us ever better attuned to how to help them. We also get to see the little changes, that lead to bigger changes, as they adapt to new skills and abilities.

Q: Where do you see the future of Developmental Services going in the years to come?

MaryJo: Well, I certainly think the future is a much more progressive one. The focus is on what people can do, not their limitations.

Assistive technology is having a huge impact, and is changing access for people with disabilities. It’s exciting, all the different ways people can use technology and it’s changing how people are able to find their fit within the world. It’s a big equalizer. Honestly, there are people we were serving as recently as 5 years ago that may not even qualify for those services now, simply because technology has progressed enough to help people become more independent.

Society is moving past the old beliefs that people with intellectual disabilities shouldn’t be expected to be able to work, to care for themselves, and to be held accountable for their behavior and actions. We’ve been able to push the expectations we have for people we serve, and for the communities that they live in. And I think that’s going to continue.  

Bay Cove is part of this movement, and we’re always trying to push it forward. We believe in “work with, not for. Do with, not for.”

The generational aspect of the people we serve is fascinating. We have older people in our programs who have lived through being in institutions, who’ve lived through being housed in communities that didn’t want them. But now they’ve made homes, worked at jobs, and are ready to retire. On the other hand, we have younger clients who were never institutionalized, and grew up with technology as part of their entire lives that’s allowed them to have a much more integrated “normal” life.